Jessica Klinkenberg
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, September 5, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - City officials aren't sure why the fire alarm keeps ringing at the Multiplex arena, but one says he is hopeful the problem will be fixed in time for the Edmonton Oilers' rookie training camp, which starts on Friday.

The alarm has sounded off 12 times since Aug. 21. The last time was Thursday morning.

"What we thought it was, was because they were doing construction on the water line, we believed that was the problem," said Andrew Morton, city manager of facilities.

"The timing of (the alarm) going off was similar to when water was being turned off, but the alarm went off when construction was over."

Even though all the alarms were false, the Yellowknife fire department still responded.

"Sometimes when we get into these malfunctions, or with systems, periodically we'll get into this," said deputy fire chief Chucker Dewar, referring to the sprinkler and fire alarm system at the Multiplex.

He said after a certain amount of calls the fire department may start charging the facility, even though, like the fire department, it's run by the city.

"There is a point in time when the fire division will say, 'Okay that's enough and you can no longer call on the fire department with these nuisance calls.'"

Because the city is working to address the problem, Dewar said the fire department didn't serve them with a bill, which is the normal procedure with any other false alarm.

"It still takes up the time for our people who are involved in other activities," said Dewar.

"They can impact our department so we try to curb them as soon as possible."

He said false alarms divert their attention from maintenance work and training.

"Generally these are corrected, it's just a matter of an electrician or a sprinkler person locating the problem," said Dewar.

On Thursday - on the day of the last alarm reported - the city had a mechanic go through the arena in attempt to locate and fix the problem.

Yellowknifer was unable to confirm with the city whether the problem has been solved at press time.